Pokemon Go players only have a few more hours to catch Entei, Raikou, or Suicune. The three Legendary dogs from Pokemon Gold and Silver will only be available in their current region through September 29, after which they'll move on to a different part of the world.
Unlike the previous Legendary Pokemon that have appeared in Pokemon Go, only one of the three Legendary dogs is available in a specific region at a time. Currently, the Electric-type Raikou can be found in the Americas; the Fire-type Entei is available in Europe and Africa; and players in the Asia-Pacific region can encounter the Water-type Suicune. On September 30, the Pokemon will rotate to a different region, where they'll be available until October 31.
As in the past, you can encounter the Legendary dogs in special Raid battles at Gyms. You'll need to defeat the powerful Pokemon first to get an opportunity to capture them. You can check out our guide on how to catch Legendary Pokemon for more details on how to take part in Raids.
Players also still have a few more days to take advantage of Pokemon Go's in-game Equinox event. Until October 2, you can earn double Stardust for catching Pokemon and hatching eggs. You'll also net triple the normal amount of XP by registering a new Pokemon in your Pokedex, and PokeStops and Gyms will dole out special 2 km eggs that may hatch into Chansey, Mareep, Larvitar, and other rare Pokemon. However, some players have reported issues with Pokemon Go's servers today, which developer Niantic says it is currently investigating.
September is closing and Fall is finally here, which means this month's free Games with Gold titles are wrapping up too. Two titles are on their way out, while one is sticking around through mid-October.
This month we got to have a taste of whats to come with Forza Motorsport 7 through Forza Motorsport 5: Game of the Year Edition, and Dice's renowned shooter Battlefield 3 came back one more time to remind us how much we love realistic and visceral combat. These two titles are on their way to regular pricing after today, while supernatural adventure title Oxenfree will stay free to charm our hearts for a little while longer.
September 2017 Games With Gold
Xbox One
Forza Motorsport 5: Game of the Year Edition (September 1-30)
Destiny 2's enigmatic merchant Xur has once again appeared in-game, bringing with him a selection of weapons and armor that Hunters, Warlocks, and Titans can use to marginally improve their performance in the great battle against the almighty power level cap.
This week ya boy Xur has landed on Io, and if you open your map you'll see him lurking in the top left corner of Giant's Scar. Although it's pretty easy to get to his general location, he's actually tucked away inside a little cave, so keep an eye open for the entrance. Here's what he's selling this week:
Transversive Steps (Warlock Class Leg Armor) -- 23 Legendary Shards
Destiny 2's servers will be taken offline next week as part of the deployment of the game's next hotfix update. Servers for PS4 and Xbox One are going offline on Tuesday, October 3 and will be unavailable for around three hours. You can read more about the upcoming Destiny 2 server maintenance here.
In other Destiny 2 news, Bungie has confirmed that Faction Rallies are not going to be a weekly event. Once the event is over players will no longer earn Faction Rallies tokens. However, tokens that are already in a player's inventory can still be redeemed and all engrams from vendors will be auto-decrypted and sent to the player.
For more on Destiny 2, check out our recent stories linked below:
Zelda fans looking for more reading material on Nintendo's legendary series will be able to pick up another beautiful and comprehensive book next spring. Comic publisher Dark Horse has announced it will release an English version of The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia in April 2018.
As its name implies, The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia is a voluminous book about the world of Hyrule. Dark Horse says the 320-page tome covers the series up to the release of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD and "describes enemies and items, potions and poes, an expansion of the lore touched upon in the 2013 smash-hit Hyrule Historia, concept art, screencaps, maps, main characters and how they relate, languages, and much, much more." The book also includes an interview with Legend of Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma.
The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia is the third in what is dubbed the "Goddess Collection" trilogy of Zelda books. The first installment, Hyrule Historia, was published in 2013 and featured concept art, developer insight, and timeline placement for each of the series' games. The most recent book, The Legend of Zelda Arts & Artifacts, released earlier this year and contained a comprehensive selection of promotional and concept art from throughout the series' long history.
In addition to The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia, Nintendo announced it is releasing a new art book focusing exclusively on the series' most recent installment, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. No release date has been announced, but Nintendo did share a few sample images from the book earlier this summer, showcasing early sketches of the popular Zora prince Sidon and his father, King Dorephan.
The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia releases on April 24, 2018 and will retail for $40. The book is available for pre-order now on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Nintendo of Europe has announced the date and theme for the next Splatfest event in Splatoon 2. The competition takes place the first full weekend of October and asks the most important question yet: how do you hang your roll of toilet paper?
The Splatfest kicks off on October 7 at 4 PM CEST/3 PM BST and runs for a full 24 hours. As before, to take part in the event head to the polling booth in Inkopolis Square once it appears in-game and vote for which side you support.
Nintendo still hasn't announced the theme for North America's next Splatfest, but the previous events have thus far been the same across the two regions. The most recent competition took place the first weekend of September and asked players which superpower they would rather have: flight or invisibility. Japan, however, typically receives its own special Splatfest theme; its most recent competition pit McDonald's fries against chicken nuggets.
The next free DLC weapon in Splatoon 2 is now available. Unlike the recent string of returning guns, this week adds another new umbrella-class weapon to the game: the Tenta Brella. This variant has a slower firing rate than the standard Splat Brella, but it packs a lot more power and opens up much wider, as you can see in the screenshots below.
The Tenta Brella comes outfitted with the Squid Beakon sub weapon, which allows you to Super Jump to wherever the Beakon is placed. Its special is the recently added Bubble Blower ability. You can pick up the Tenta Brella using your in-game currency from the Ammo Knights weapon shop.
The open beta for space-age VR shooter From Other Suns is now live on Oculus Rift. Gather your friends and get ready for a joyride through the Milky Way.
From Other Suns pits you as a pilot destined to save humanity...or, uh, let it die. You'll have to manage your ship as robots, aliens, and pirates come to destroy you. Do so with up to two friends, or all on your own.
The title is procedurally generated, so every playthrough should feel unique and fresh. The randomization doesn't just apply to enemies, it extends to weapons, level design, and characters; no two games should ever be the same.
From Other Sun's open beta is only open until October 1 at 11:59pm PT. The title is expected to launch fully later this fall.
It's been a long time coming, but Cuphead is finally available. The highly anticipated platformer is notable for its beautiful, 1930s-era cartoon visuals and relentless difficulty, but hidden within the retro-style game is a secret mode that you may not be aware of.
Mild spoilers for Cuphead follow below. If you'd like to unlock the mode yourself, do not read any further.
In Cuphead's World 3 hub, you'll notice a turtle sitting by the docks. If you speak to him, the turtle will talk to you about pacifism, hinting that a special bonus awaits if you can clear the game's platforming levels without shooting any enemies.
If you do complete a level without shooting, you'll get a P as your grade. The flag you raise for the level will also be denoted with a P. If you manage to do this for all six of the game's platforming stages (Forest Follies, Treetop Trouble, Funfair Fever, Funhouse Frazzle, Perilous Piers, and Rugged Ridge), return to the turtle and he'll unlock a black-and-white mode and audio filters to give the game an even more vintage presentation.
Cuphead poses a steep challenge even without a self-imposed restriction like this, so you'll need to plan the use of your Charms and Super weapons carefully if you want to unlock the black-and-white mode. It should also be noted that you only need to avoid shooting your weapon to earn a P grade; parries, dashing, and the Invincibility Super won't count against you. You'll also unlock Expert mode once you clear the game, which makes everything move faster than normal.
Black-and-white isn't the only kind of filter you can unlock in Cuphead. Also in World 3 is a monocle-wearing fork standing outside the shop. The fork mentions that he is looking for "Grade A" people, and it seems that if you can score an A or above in each of the game's bosses, he'll unlock a two-stripe filter, though you may still be able to unlock the filter with a few B grades scattered about your checklist. You can learn more about how to unlock these filters in the video above.
Cuphead is out now for Xbox One and PC. Despite its long delay, the game has earned widespread acclaim from critics. In GameSpot's Cuphead review, Peter Brown called it "a rare, unique game that truly stands out" and awarded it an 8/10.
Over the summer, WWE superstars Tyler Breeze and Fandango, known to fans as the comedic tag team of Breezango, made waves when their Twin Peaks spoof "Fashion Peaks" received mainstream attention from those who don't typically follow wrestling.
During the WWE 2K18 event at WWE's archives in Connecticut, the fashion-forward wrestlers spoke to GameSpot about how their weekly segment, known as The Fashion Files, came to be: "It all kinda naturally just happened, man," explained Breeze. "We kinda stumbled upon something, and then we go, 'That was kinda cool.' So then all of a sudden it gets more, and more. Before you know it, you kind of have, you know, a room full of people laughing as you're filming stuff. You just kinda go, I think this is good."
Back in May, the Fashion Files segment first aired, which was a spoof of the police procedural Law & Order. From there, the tag team parodied other popular shows from the past including Walker, Texas Ranger, Miami Vice, and The X-Files; however, it was their segment "Fashion Peaks," which turned everyone's heads.
"It's something different that I don't think we've ever done here in the WWE, kind of, spoofing those old television shows," explained Fandango. "People like it, you know, it brings an outside audience that kinda draws their attention to, 'What are these guys doing?' Whether they see the clip on YouTube or whatever. Even, actually, the main actor from Twin Peaks... They get it. They think it's cool that we're kinda spoofing them."
Because the segment aired just a few weeks before Twin Peaks returned for a new season, Fashion Peaks got a lot of attention. "It's kinda cool when you're doing stuff like this, and we definitely pride ourselves a lot on hearing back from the fans," said Breeze. "Kinda hearing what everybody thinks of it. Especially doing this type of stuff. If you turn on Smackdown, or Raw, you're kind of expecting wrestling. But if you get the Fashion Files, it's kinda something different, and a lot of people say, 'Hey, this is my first time watching and I loved it. Because it wasn't what I was expecting.' It's kinda cool hearing that."
"Huge Twin Peaks fans are now tuning in to watch wrestling to see if these weird dudes are going to do another spoof or not," Fandango said.
The Fashion Files returns to WWE's Tuesday night show Smackdown on October 3, and the duo gave us a little taste of what's coming: "We still got some unsolved mysteries we gotta solve there," explained Breeze. "We got 2B to figure out. Aiden English is our only lead." In addition, Fandango went on to say they have some "Hell in the Cell business to take care of," and they'll be arresting some culprits leading into the October 8 PPV.
Both Fandango and Tyler Breeze will be playable characters in WWE 2K18, coming to Xbox One, PS4, and PC on October 17. In addition, the game will come to Switch at a later date. You can check out every confirmed wrestler in the game here and learn what's coming to this year's edition for DLC.
In the US, we know Best Buy stores will have SNES Classic units in stock today, while GameStop and ThinkGeek will apparently have a "limited and varied amount of consoles" on sale. UK consumers can try their luck on the high street, but major online retailers like Game, Amazon, and Argos are all sold out for the time being. Australia, meanwhile, has to wait until tomorrow, September 30 to get their hands on the device. For more, you can check out our SNES Classic buying guide.
In our SNES Classic Edition review, critic Michael Higham said Nintendo has done a "damn fine job" of evoking childhood nostalgia. The console--which costs US $80 / £60 / AU $120--also includes a rewind feature so you can go back and try again if you fail.
The timing of Call of Duty: WWII's release might suggest there was some political motivation behind making it--it is, after all, a game about battling Nazi forces that's coming at a point where we've seen real-life, unabashed support of Nazism in the United States. In fact, the timing is a mere coincidence, given that development on the game started several years ago. However, WWII's developers do hope there are lessons players can take away from the experience.
"No, I don't think that current climate has affected us or changed our strategy or our message," Sledgehammer co-founder Michael Condrey tells GameSpot. "We set [production] in motion before that. It's still rooted in the same place, which is telling us the story of camaraderie and heroism in an important time in human history."
Fellow co-founder Glen Schofield echoes that sentiment, saying it's "coincidental" that Sledgehammer is releasing a game where you fight Nazis at this point in time. He also suggests it's simply a trend in popular culture where, seemingly out of nowhere, we'll suddenly see multiple projects focus on the same subject that had not been getting much attention previously--like how we suddenly saw movies such as Dunkirk and Hacksaw Ridge come out in a short span of time.
Despite the importance of World War II, there are concerns that its significance (and that of the Holocaust, which is touched on in some way in the game) could be lost on the younger generation, particularly as those who lived through the era continue to pass away. Condrey suggests this game is an opportunity to remind--or perhaps even introduce--the conflict and its horrors to a new audience.
"I also think [this subject] is still as important today as when we started three years ago," he says. "It's telling the story so it doesn't happen again, that is important. Telling the story because the people that went to fight for our cause are no longer telling it, that's still important."
Condrey brings up the Spanish American War as an example of something that doesn't receive the same sort of attention that it used to, and how that can't be allowed to happen with World War II.
"I remember when we were with Marty [Morgan, a historian and advisor on the game] in New Orleans outside of the World War Two history museum. He walked us down, and it was a great moment; he walked us down to this monument in New Orleans [to] The Spanish American War," he explains. "It's a monument that's somewhat overgrown, somewhat forgotten. [It's an] important moment in history, and yet it's sort of gone from historical relevance."
After pointing out that the Spanish American War isn't taught to the same degree as it used to be, Condrey says, "Exactly. That was his point. We can't allow World War II to fade. It was too important an infliction moment in human history to let it fade in the same way that the Spanish American War has faded from this country's history.
"That has made this the most personal and profound game I've ever worked on." -- Michael Condrey on Call of Duty: WWII
"That has been meaningful. That has made this the most personal and profound game I've ever worked on. I've worked on a lot of games I'm really proud of, a lot of creative games that gave me a lot of excitement and joy. None have carried the historical weight and meaning that this one has. That's been really rewarding."
Schofield says politics weren't what drove the decision to make this game, but that he, too, hopes that it can play some part in ensuring the horrors of WWII are never repeated. "Trying to equate anything [in] a video game to what's going on today in politics would be wrong," he says. "Not that I'm not politically motivated, but we started the game three years ago."
Noting that he prefers to allow people to have their own interpretation of art, he says, "I guess what I'm just trying to say is that I don't know about the politics of today and how that all works into it. I hope, you know, my stance is that I never want this to happen again, and if the game can help in any way, then wow, that would be awesome."
EA has released another new trailer Star Wars Battlefront II. This video offers a glimpse at one of the scenes from the game's single-player campaign mode and introduces fans to a menacing adversary: Messenger droids.
Battlefront II's campaign is set between the events of the series' sixth and seventh episodes, Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. Emperor Palpatine has been defeated, but his presence lingers on in the form of the Messenger droids, which are agents of the Emperor's Contingency. Messengers bear a hologram of Palpatine's face and punish members of the Empire and Rebellion alike.
"Early in Star Wars Battlefront II, a Messenger tasks Iden and her father, Garrick Versio, with terrifying instructions," EA reveals in a post on PlayStation Blog. "We don't want to reveal much more about this critical sequence, but it's pretty clear that Iden's 'unusual' mission will place her on a collision course with the last wishes of the fallen Emperor."
Star Wars Battlefront II releases for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on November 17. Before then, EA will hold a beta for the game from October 6-9; those who pre-order the title will be able to jump in two days early, on October 4. The beta will be available on all of the aforementioned platforms, though PC players will need to meet these specs in order to participate.
Some time around last Christmas, Michael Condrey, the co-founder of Sledgehammer Games, huddled in a foxhole in Hürtgen forest, on the border of Germany and Belgium. In a nearby foxhole, buried under five feet of snow, Condrey's fellow co-founder, Glen Schofield, was dreaming of the heated van they'd left on the side of the highway three hours earlier.
The only one who seemed to be enjoying himself was Condrey and Schofield's guide, Martin Morgan, a war historian who leads battlefield tours around Europe. He was examining a squat, pyramid-like structure made of concrete--what was left of an entire row of so-called "dragon's teeth," fortifications made by soldiers to stop advancing tanks.
Condrey and Schofield had hired Morgan to bring them here, to the site of one of the biggest clashes of WWII, The Battle of Hürtgen Forest. Sledgehammer had just started work on a new Call of Duty game that would, for the first time in a decade, return to a WWII setting, and Condrey and Schofield wanted to see the battlefields for themselves. They wanted to sit in the same foxholes where hundreds of young Allied and German soldiers had sat during the winter of 1944, braving blizzards, hunger, and the constant fear of death. They wanted to walk on the same ground as Allied soldiers during the liberation of Paris, drive the same tanks, fire the same weapons. They wanted to come as close as possible to understanding a soldier's experience of what Condrey calls "the last great war."
"After three hours, I was ready to get in the car and turn the heater on," Condrey said later. "It really made us committed to honoring what we came to realize was an incredible sacrifice."
Condrey and Schofield, both in their mid-40s, first met while working together at EA's Visceral Games. They created 2008's critically acclaimed Dead Space before leaving to start Sledgehammer in 2009. Activision acquired the studio later the same year after the pair successfully pitched a third-person Call of Duty spinoff title that would attempt to mirror the success of Dead Space. That game never happened--the Jason West/Vince Zampella lawsuit kicked off, and with development on Modern Warfare 3 in potential jeopardy, Activision asked Sledgehammer to join forces with what was left of Infinity Ward to finish the game.
Modern Warfare 3 was a commercial success and gave Condrey and Schofield the freedom to pretty much do whatever they wanted; a few years later, Activision gave them the reins to the franchise's first sci-fi instalment, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare.
Michael Condrey (left) and Martin Morgan surveying foxholes occupied by 101st Airborne during Battle of the Bulge, in Bois Jacques, part of the Ardennes Forest just outside Foy, Belgium.
When it came time to work on a new Call of Duty, Sledgehammer and Activision asked themselves where they wanted to see the franchise go--as fans, rather than developers. Back to where it all began seemed like the right answer, particularly in light of Hollywood's recent fascination with WWII, from David Ayer's Fury in 2014 to Hacksaw Ridge, Allied, and Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk earlier this year. "When you think about it, [before these films], Saving Private Ryan was the last great WWII film, and that was 20 years ago," Condrey told me recently. "That's like a whole generation ago. We saw an opportunity to reenergize the cause in a place where films and games haven't been for a while."
We were sitting in a boardroom adjoining Condrey and Schofield's office, at Sledgehammer's headquarters in Foster City, California. The decade or so Condrey and Schofield have spent working together has lent them an endearing, Odd Couple-like vibe: Condrey is quiet and methodical, a master of corporate jargon, while Schofield is loud and unrehearsed.
The studio is in the middle of an expansion--Condrey and Schofield recently took over the floor above them, and construction on new offices, meeting rooms, and a lobby is underway. (The decor says more accountant's office than video game studio; the one indulgence seems to be a Crayola-blue slide that connects the first and second floors, which employees regularly attempt to master while holding full cups of coffee, to varying degrees of success.)
Schofield grew up hearing stories of his grandfather, who served in WWII, and his uncle, who served in Vietnam. He still keeps his grandfather's war medals in a glass case in his office. There's a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, which, as the story goes, Schofield's grandfather won for ambushing a German machine gun patrol while fighting in Italy. He lost his leg in the process, but he refused to talk about it. It fell on Schofield's father to retell the stories, and he did, often.
Dragon's Teeth from an area on the Siegfried Line near Hollerath, Germany.
Shortly after development on WWII began, Schofield's father died. Suddenly, it was Schofield's turn to step into the role of storyteller. "We realized we need to keep telling these stories so the world doesn't forget what happened--and so it doesn't happen again," Condrey said.
Schofield began writing to different US regiments and divisions: the 34th, the 1st, the 101st. Most responded enthusiastically, sharing stories, details, and ideologies. "The first thing you realize when you talk to veterans is that they absolutely do not consider themselves heroes," Condrey said. Those conversations eventually helped shaped the game's main narrative, which follows a young soldier deployed to the battlefields of Europe with the US Army's 16th Infantry Regiment.
Typically, Call of Duty characters are gruff, hardass types--Captain John Price, for example, who pops up in all the Modern Warfare titles, is a member of the British Special Air Service and toughened POW who served time in a Russian prison. Captain John "Soap" MacTavish, another favorite, is an expert in disabling nuclear missiles and seems to spend half of the series mortally wounded. By contrast, WWII's main protagonist is as green as they come: 19-year-old private Ronald "Red" Daniels--Schofield named Daniels after his father--who has never been outside of Texas before.
Daniels won't be able to solve every problem with a gun, either. "There are absolutely stretches of it in different levels where it's just sheerly about survival," Bret Robbins, the creative director at Sledgehammer, told me. "We didn't want it to feel exclusively, you know, 'If I just shoot enough people I can get through this experience.' Because these guys weren't professional soldiers, remember that. They ended up becoming superhuman purely because of the things they had to go through."
One of the game's most dramatic moments, according to Robbins, happens when one soldier punches another. "I mean, this would be a trivial matter in a normal Call of Duty game, right? But here, it's actually a really charged moment."
After figuring out a rough narrative for the main campaign, Condrey hunted for an academic specializing in WWII history. A friend recommended the historian, Morgan. The 48-year-old worked with the late Stephen Ambrose, author of the New York Times bestseller Band of Brothers, and consulted on the HBO mini-series The Pacific. Morgan's particular academic interest is in what he calls memorialization--the way pop culture representations of war can sometimes introduce factual errors that linger in the public consciousness.
Take Saving Private Ryan, for example. The film, which came out in 1998, renewed interest in WWII by reaching levels of authenticity that no war film ever had before. But it also simultaneously introduced certain inaccuracies--like the idea that D-Day was actually that intensely violent the whole time. "The attraction to the time and place of greatest gratuitous violence has made it difficult to convince people that D-Day on Omaha Beach, in some places, did not descend into hopeless chaos," Morgan told me.
We talked about making a game that could possibly teach people why we should never have this happen again.
Michael Condrey, Sledgehammer Games
Which is to say that Morgan is a stickler for details. He began advising Condrey and Schofield on everything from uniforms to weapons. He invited them to the National WWII Museum in New Orleans so they could sit inside German tanks. The studio sent the entire sound design department to Louisiana, where Morgan lives, to record audio capture of Morgan's World War II weapons, while the art department got access to Morgan's impressive stockpile of original archival WWII photos.
But Condrey and Schofield wanted to go further. "Some of these guys walked across France with a 60-pound backpack, a 10-pound gun, wondering where their next meal was going to be," Schofield told me. "What does that feel like?"
They asked Morgan to show them.
The original idea was to follow in the fictional Red Daniels' footsteps, from Normandy through Luxembourg, Belgium and Germany. Morgan coordinated everything, including necessary pit stops: the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial, in which some 5,076 American service members are buried, most of whom died during the Battle of the Bulge; the Holocaust memorial in Berlin; a burned-out church in Where, France that German troops set on fire after ordering everyone in the village to get inside.
"If you think about a lake, and are asked to describe it, most people would describe it as something like 'blue water'," Condrey said, explaining he and Schofield's version of 'boots on the ground'. "But if you actually visit a lake, you'll find the water is rarely blue--it might be blue-green, or a little bit gray, or maybe even black. So it's this idea of what you think something is and what it actually is--and you can never know until you see something for yourself."
Detail of bullet damage on a house in Foy, Belgium. This damage was produced during the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division attack on German forces occupying the town on January 13, 1945.
Morgan knew exactly where to take them. "We were driving around somewhere in Europe, I can't even remember where now, and we came around the corner of this road and there's this giant tank just hanging out in the middle of nowhere," Schofield said. "And it's because it's so big that no one could actually get it down the hill, so it's just been sitting there since the war. And I'm thinking surely we should be able to move that nowadays with cranes or whatever. And Marty's like, no, this thing is over 60 tonnes. And we get up close to it and there's a giant bomb stuck inside it--it's a German tank that was hit with an American shell and the tank was so tough that not even the shell could get through. It really drove the point home just how strong some of the German equipment was, and why they were such great engineers."
The foxholes and dragon's teeth from Hürtgen forest both made it into the game. Condrey and Schofield also designed a sequence featuring what can only be described as exploding trees. The density of the forest meant a lot of the shells ended up hitting trees, not soldiers--which could prove even more fatal. "You got these huge chunks of wood flying a thousand miles an hour into people," Robbins said. "More people died from shrapnel from the trees than from the actual shells themselves."
German Pillbox, part of the German Westwall, Wallendorf, Germany (along the Luxembourg/German border).
There are thousands of photos in Sledgehammer's archives from each of these trips, many of them trying to capture the smallest of details: rust on an old bomb shelter in the middle of Luxembourg (that's since been turned into a bus stop); bullet holes in a wall in a village in Belgium; an old church in a village in France. Most were taken by Sledgehammer's art director, Joseph Salud, whose task was to document the miniscule visual details of each environment. He went to Normandy beach on June 6--the anniversary of D-Day--to capture everything from the color of the sky to the size of the waves as they might have been on that day in 1944.
When Condrey and Salud visited Gibraltar, in Spain, which features in one of the game's multiplayer maps, they realized they'd put one of the city's most iconic buildings, The Moorish Castle, completely at the wrong end of the map. "It was 180 degrees from where it was supposed to be, and we wouldn't have known that unless we'd actually gone to see it," Condrey said. (They also encountered the Barbary macaques, a species of tailless monkeys that make an appearance in the game after a friendly one made off with Condrey's backpack.)
Salud took notes from The Revenant, which director Alejandro G. Iñárritu shot using only natural lighting in remote locations around Canada, the US, and Argentina. "I loved how [Iñárritu] was able to capture the feeling of the weather--the mood and emotion in the film all flowed from that." To try and imitate the same process, he used photogrammetry--photographing in realistic lighting conditions and then extracting the finer data points from the photographs to make an accurate digital 3D rendition. "You could take a snapshot of any one of our screens and you'd still be hard-pressed to tell it's not a photo," Schofield boasted.
Detail of Panzer V Panther Tread in Houfflaize, Belgium .
Probably the best way to test this is to look for piles of rubble in the game. Salud spent half a day photographing one particular pile of rubble in the crumbling village of Oradour-sur-Glane, in France, whose 642 inhabitants were massacred by Nazi SS soldiers in June 1944. After the war, French leader Charles De Gaulle ordered the destroyed village be kept in its original state as a memorial. "Prior to coming here, the rubble we had in the game was just, you know, generic rubble--bricks and stuff," Salud told me. "But actually, in real life it's not generic is it? There are things buried beneath it: bits of cars, furniture, children's toys. It humanizes the whole experience."
Even the game's famed Zombie mode has elements of historical accuracy, thanks in large part to the WWII history museum in Luxembourg, which contains a hefty collection of Nazi oddities and medical equipment. The photos brought back by Scott Whitney, the game's narrative director, are the stuff of nightmares: oversized syringes, surgical spreaders, Nazi chainsaws.
There's also the fact that Hitler himself was eternally obsessed with the occult, hoping he'd stumble on proof of a master race. "These crazy f***ers began pursuing archeological digs to try and prove these theories," Jon Horsley, the lead on WWII's Zombies mode, told me. According to Horsley, who has been intensely studying Nazi relics, the Zombie story will revolve around the myth of Barbarossa, popularized by the Brothers Grimm, which centers on an undead German emperor who sleeps beneath a mountain, waiting to be awoken. "So yes, it's still Zombies--but with a purpose," he said.
More often than not, games of WWII's size and budget tend to be binary in their depiction of good and evil, with little in the way of grey areas. After returning from Europe, Condrey and Schofield realized they'd have to take a different approach. "There's humanity on both sides," Condrey told me. "So you'll see the best and the worst of both the Allies and the Germans."
This realization also went some way to helping the studio figure out how to deal with the darkest aspect of WWII in a game whose ultimate purpose is entertainment. Condrey and Schofield didn't want to talk about the extent that the events of the Holocaust will be covered in the game--other than to say it will be covered--but Morgan did tell me the topic is too important to be dealt with superficially. "When it comes to Holocaust and genocide education, we are overexposed and undereducated," he said.
"It didn't feel like it would've been a complete picture or very honest game if we hadn't addressed some of that," Robbins told me later. "We definitely go to a dark place at times, and it just felt very important to us to show that in some form that these events happened."
The beaches of Normandy, today.
Presenting the events of the Holocaust without being overly didactic certainly carries weight, particularly in light of recent events. I visited Sledgehammer a few weeks after white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched across Charlottesville, Virginia, carrying torches and guns while chanting, "Jews will not replace us." At a time when games have a wider reach in popular culture than ever before, the medium seems perfectly positioned to participate in the wider discourse. "We need to address the subject of what a destructive ideology can do when it takes control in a country where democracy has been undermined and destroyed," Morgan, the historian, said.
Condrey and Schofield seemed reluctant to go that far. Condrey did offer this, however: "I've worked on a lot of games I'm really proud of," Condrey said. "None have carried the historical weight and meaning that this one has."
"We talked about making a game that could possibly teach people why we should never have this happen again," Schofield said. "Can we really do that in the game? I don't know, but you've got to have a higher goal when you're working on something like this."
The Exorcist returns to TV tonight for its second season, and after an advance screening of the premiere, it's clear that this is one of the best horror programs to hit network TV in years.
When the series first premiered on Fox in the Fall of 2016, the question on many die-hard horror fans' minds was, "Why?" Seriously, why reboot this classic horror film for TV? Audiences have previously seen similar attempts fail---the Omen sequel series, Damien, comes to mind. Aside from the fact that re-imagining movies as TV show properties is a popular trend these days, it felt as if an Exorcist series was not only unnecessary--it was a smack to the face of genre film purists everywhere.
Then Episode 3, "Let Them In," aired, and collective praise from horror nerds began to reverberate across the internet. What started off feeling like a gimmick-filled horror show quickly revealed itself as much more. The Exorcist began to tackle deep societal issues including religion, politics, child abuse, and sexual identity while embedding itself in a horrific world of possession-hungry demons and the few priests out to keep utter chaos from enveloping the planet. To put it bluntly, The Exorcist is a genre diamond in the television rough.
Season 1 followed the story of The Rance Family and the possession of their youngest daughter Casey (Hannah Kasulka). While this storyline felt familiar, a huge twist was eventually revealed: Angela Rance (Geena Davis) was actually Regan MacNeil (Linda Blair), the pea soup-spewing girl from William Friedkin's original film. It turned out that Fox's The Exorcist wasn't a reboot or remake at all, but a direct sequel to the 1973 horror classic.
The struggles of the Rance family were only one part to an intricate puzzle show creator Jeremy Slater and crew were out to piece together. While Geena Davis's addition to the cast brought buzz and cinematic clout to the series, the introduction of exorcist duo Father Marcus (Ben Daniels) and Father Tomas (Alfonso Herrera) added extra stakes to the mix. And as a deep-seated church conspiracy took root--with some evil priests gaining power in a growing partnership with an army of demons--a bigger world began presenting itself. It's this larger landscape that Season 2 sets out to explore in the premiere episode, "Janus."
A Creepy New Possession
A six-month time jump puts Marcus and Tomas on the road with the sole mission of ridding the country of every pesky demon they can get their grizzled, holy hands on. While that formula may sound similar to the likes of The CW's Supernatural or even Starz's Ash vs. Evil Dead, there's a grounded realism that keeps the tale of these rogue priests from venturing into any sort of campiness.
As Slater explained to THR during the TCA Summer Tour, The Exorcist was never meant to be a monster-of-the-week show. Instead, the point of the series has always been to follow Marcus and Tomas on their adventures as the story steadily dives deeper into the ongoing church conspiracy. With a plan to keep the series going for six seasons, each one focusing on a different case, it feels like this strategy will provide a delightfully unpredictable freshness to the formulaic network TV structure.
Gone from Season 2 is the claustrophobic horror that made the city streets of Chicago so foreboding. Instead, viewers are presented with a traveling horror show across the rural Texas Chainsaw Massacre-style back roads that make America so, uh, great. It's only been six months since in this new journey, but there are cracks already forming in the bond between Marcus and Tomas, foreshadowing a big conflict on the horizon. As the episode follows their mission to save a possessed woman from certain death, the episode's B-story introduces a brand new family story to the mix.
John Cho plays Andrew Kim, a foster father of five troubled kids. It becomes clear pretty quickly that one of them will end up falling prey to the intrusion of a new demonic entity. When Brianna Hildebrand (Negasonic Teenage Warhead in Deadpool) was first added to the cast, she was eyed her as the season's possible victim. However, the show continues to do an excellent job at sprinkling clues and red herrings along the way, prompting the viewer to constantly question these surroundings, as threats can (and will) appear from any corner.
Audiences have yet to see how the demon conspiracy at the Vatican is shaping up--according to Slater, more will be coming on that front--but there's something to be said for the drastic tonal shift already on display in Season 2. Marcus and Tomas can only stay on this bloody road trip for so long, and once their journey leads them to Andy's troubled foster home, the story components that has made FOX's series an unexpected powerhouse in the genre will most certainly come together in the best and bloodiest way.
The Exorcist Season 2 premieres Friday, Sept. 29 at 9pm on Fox.
What happens after you die? No one, including Flatliners director Niels Arden Oplev, can honestly claim to be able to answer that question. It was a fun challenge to tackle nevertheless, the director told GameSpot.
"Designing or conceptualizing the afterlife--the flatlines--was challenging, because it's something that nobody knows," Oplev, who also directed the Swedish version of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and the pilot for USA's Mr. Robot, said.
Like the 1990 original, the new Flatliners follows a group of medical students--in this iteration played by Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton, and Kiersey Clemons--who take turns killing themselves then medically resuscitating one another. While "flatlining," they experience vivid visions or hallucinations that eventually begin to manifest in the real, physical world. Like the original, the new movie veers into campy thriller territory, but it's the flatlines themselves that are most interesting on a conceptual level.
Each flatline is individual to the character experiencing it, like a motorcycle ride through your old neighborhood at night. And each one eventually turns into something darker.
"[The flatlines] had to be fun, in a way that they would make the other characters want to flatline also, and also they would have to be individual for each person, since no two humans are the same," Oplev said. "And certainly they would have to be based in that the flatline was trying to bring them to something in their past that they would have to confront or face."
These trips aren't only based in fantasy, though. Oplev and the movie's writers, Peter Filardi and Ben Ripley, did research into what people have reported experiencing after dying and being resuscitated, and Oplev even spoke to some real life "flatliners" himself.
"Everything I read about the afterlife, mysticism, out-of-body experiences, spiritiualism, and all of that, in the last 40 or 45 years, reflected in how these flatlines ended up looking in the finished film," he said.
"There's really not much exact science, in the way that most scientists would call stories from the afterlife pseudo-science," he continued. "It's impossible ever, in a scientific world, to check whether that is actually true or not, whether it's something they imagined or dreamed. We read a lot of that. I talked to people who had flatlined and they felt they could remember something. I talked to some people who said there was absolutely nothing--it was just like the power was shut off until somebody brought them back to life."
Like the original, the new Flatliners never explicitly explains exactly what's going on--how or why the characters' new hobby is causing the terror going on in their real lives. Oplev wouldn't have it a different way.
"Flatliners is a supernaturall psychological thriller. It's not a horror film. And I think that turning things into a more physical demon or something like that, I think that would be ridiculous," he said. "It would take the psychological thriller element out of the film. It has to be ambiguous, in the sense that they don't know if this is going on inside their own heads...I think that the audience has to make up their own mind about it."
What about the director's personal beliefs? Does he trust in the experiences of people who've died and been brought back or had near-death experiences--or does he think it's all bologna?"
"My opinion would be that you can be an atheist in your brain, but you can be spiritual with your heart," he said. "I will say I've had some experiences in my own life that could be some sort of communication with people who are no longer living on this planet. But for me that doesn't mean that it's supernatural. That might mean that there are parts of physical science, of other dimensions and parallel universes, that we just simply don't understand yet.
"We don't have a full conception of the universe that we live in," he concluded. "We have not gained the level of intelligence--and we have also lost some senses in surrounding ourselves with comfortable technology."
PC players looking for something new to try this weekend now have another option. Right now, Boss Key's multiplayer shooter LawBreakers is free to play via Steam.
For a limited time, Steam users can download and play LawBreakers at no cost. The free trial runs all weekend and concludes on October 2 at 10 AM PT/1 PM ET. Everyone who plays the game this weekend will also be entered into a giveaway. New users who play 50 matches will be eligible to win a copy of the game, while existing players who do the same have a chance to win Stash Drops. You can find more details about the giveaway here.
If you've yet to purchase LawBreakers, you can pick up the game's standard edition from Steam for $22.49 until October 4. The Deadzo Deluxe edition, which includes exclusive DLC items such as character and weapon skins, is likewise on sale until that day for $29.98. While the free trial is only available on PC, PS4 owners also have a chance to pick up LawBreakers at a discount for a limited time. From now until October 3, the standard edition of the game is $22.49, while the Deadzo Deluxe edition runs for $30.
Final Fantasy XV's latest update is finally live on Xbox One and PS4. In addition to some small fixes and other additions, this updates drops in a fairly important story point about the Astral War.
Until now, this historical event is sidestepped in the main campaign. We know it happened, because much of the land in Lucis has scars from it, but we don't really know what happened and why. One of the few direct references to the war is a sidequest called "Aftermath of the Astral War" which sends you and your pals on a trip to take pictures of the Taelpar Crag.
A new story event that explains what led up to the Astral War has been tacked onto chapter 12 in the main campaign. If you've already beaten the story, all you have to do is revisit the chapter. For those who haven't, you may need to complete the story before you can access the additional content.
On top of all of the new lore added to the story, a bunch of other small fixes have been thrown into the mix. The second round of the Moogle Chocobo Carnival has come to an end; no news on when it may open its doors in Altissia once more. Bugs have been fixed in the Assassin's Festival event which is running until January 31, 2018. Two new fish have also been added to the title.
Entry is open Worldwide. Your closed beta key will be emailed to you within 24 hours.
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About The Amazing Eternals:
The Amazing Eternals is a new free-to-play competitive hero shooter from Digital Extremes, the studio behind Warframe. Players have the ability to construct and customize decks from sets of cards unique to each Eternal before each match. This offers players an additional layer of strategy and customization. These cards can give players powerful passive buffs, upgrades to their abilities, even devastating weapons that can turn the tide of battle in key moments.
Like its predecessor, Divinity: Original Sin II is an incredibly mechanically complex RPG with hundreds of quests and secrets to discover. While the game reveals some details, it's mostly up to you to figure out how to navigate its world. To help you better equip yourself with the knowledge to survive, we've compiled all of our in-depth guide articles and accompanying videos below. Keep in mind, there are potential spoilers in some of our guides, so tread carefully.
Check back often as we update this feature with more guides. And for more about the acclaimed RPG, be sure to read our Divinity: Original Sin II review. The game is out now for PC, but it's been in Steam Early Access for almost a year. It's the sequel to our 2014 PC Game of the Year, Divinity: Original Sin, and it netted over $2 million from 40,000 fans on Kickstarter. It features over 1,200 characters, all of them fully voice-acted.
Original Sin II is a difficult game that eagerly punishes your mistakes in combat or even when talking to NPCs. With so many factors to consider as you explore, it can be tough to survive. To help newcomers to the series, we've gathered nine tips to know before you set off to Fort Joy and into the world of Rivellon.
Much likes its predecessor, Original Sin II lets you choose a pre-made character or completely customize one. And while you are free to create a custom character, you can also opt for an Origin character (whose class and skills you can adjust). Here are some major tips to help you find out what class best suits your needs.
The game is filled to the brim with clever dialogue and hidden secrets, so much so that you could spend well over 10 hours in the opening area, Fort Joy, alone. To help you make the most of your early adventures across Rivellon, we've highlighted nine cool things you might've missed in the fort.
Building up a party takes time. With how mechanically complex the game is, there's a lot to take into consideration as you assemble your merry band of adventurers. To help you create the best party possible, we've gathered tips detailing what to look for. In addition, we've provided pointers that'll help you better manage your party.
Original Sin II is one of the most challenging RPGs out right now, with a deep and intricate storyline, tons of quests, and tactical combat that demands the most out of players. That's why we've gathered some expert tips on how to tackle the game's various challenges, as well as details on what you need to do to become a god in the fantasy land of Rivellon.
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